Agile architectures in a modern cloud-native ecosystem
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The document discusses the challenges faced by two individuals, Sam and Stephanie, in their respective attempts to transition into roles as cloud architects, highlighting the importance of understanding cloud architecture fundamentals. It emphasizes that certifications alone are insufficient and that a holistic view of system design, as well as a comprehension of non-functional requirements (NFRs), are crucial for success. Additionally, it offers insights into cloud-native architecture principles and practical advice for developing skills relevant to cloud architecture.
Agile architectures in a modern cloud-native ecosystem
- 1. AGILE ARCHITECTURE IN A MODERN CLOUD-NATIVE ECOSYSTEM By Turja N Chaudhuri
- 4. Meet Sam . Sam has around 10 years of experience in IT as a SysAdmin + IT Operator. Sam recently completed 3 cloud certification exams.
- 5. With his newfound cloud knowledge , Sam attends a Cloud architecture interview for a prestigious IT firm .
- 6. Unfortunately , the interview does not go well . He is asked about topics he had not encountered in the cloud certification exams . He gets rejected .
- 7. Meet Stephanie . She works as a Lead Developer in an IT company. She has developed quite a few products using cloud services.
- 8. She is asked to take over the role of a Cloud Architect for a large-scale application which will be published across the enterprise.
- 9. She delivers the product , but it is neither scalable ,nor resilient enough , even though she is a great coder , and had put the best programming standards in place . She loses the trust of the client and as a consequence , her manager.
- 11. So , the million $ question is – 1 . What went wrong ? 2 . What did they (particularly) do wrong ? 3 . How can I/you prevent myself/ourself from doing the same mistakes?
- 12. Hopefully , at the end of the talk , you(the audience) should be in a better position to answer these questions yourself !! We will revisit these 2 scenarios at the end of this talk!!
- 14. Let me (briefly) introduce myself -
- 15. Currently , an Assistant Director, Cloud Practice at EY (Ernst & Young). Before that I led the CCOE ( Cloud Centre Of Excellence Team ) at Accenture. Have 10+ years of IT experience , working on Cloud since 2017. But , most importantly , I successfully transitioned my career from being a C#,SQL developer to a Cloud solution architect.
- 16. I want to help you do the same , in case you guys are interested
- 17. I will try to leave 5-10 minutes at the end to address any queries you might have on this topic. So , you can ask the questions on chat . If I cannot answer them during the session I promise , I will personally reach out to you , and answer them later.
- 19. Agenda -
- 20. Before ,we go into Cloud Native Architecture , we need to first understand the basics. Note – Getting the basics right is very important. In this ever-changing landscape of myriad technologies , it is only possible to stay relevant , if you understand the foundation topics . The trick to note here is that the fundamentals / basics have not changed that much over the years. They have stood the test of time . Today there is Kubernetes tomorrow there will be something else , but the essence will stay the same ( mostly ).
- 21. Otherwise , the same issues we faced earlier (in our on-prem systems , for example ) , will potentially resurface.
- 22. What is architecture ?
- 23. IEEE 1471:2000 definition - ‘’The fundamental organization of a system embodied in its components, their relationships to each other, and to the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution.’’
- 25. Grady Booch , IBM Fellow ‘’All architecture is design but not all design is architecture; architecture represents the set of significant design decisions that shape the structure and behaviour of a system where significance is measured by cost of change.’’ Ref - https://twitter.com/grady_booch/status/1257355498598342656?lang=en
- 26. Martin Fowler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DngAZyWMGR0 “the set of design decisions that must be made early” What is architecture ?
- 27. Matthew Parker , previously Global Head of engineering – Pivotal Labs “Architecture , in the field of software development , are decisions that are hard to reverse ”
- 28. Some examples could be - “Whether to deploy our application on container based compute environment like Kubernetes or go with a serverless model like AWS Lambda ” “Whether to go with synchronous API-based communication or use a event-bus based asynchronous messaging system like RabbitMQ/AWS SQS” OR OR “What programming language do you use for your application development”
- 30. Ok , then who/what are architects ?
- 32. “Architects have a holistic understanding of the system , across a different spectrum of views and viewpoints , and they offer a different perspective of the system/design.”
- 33. “The architect doesn’t have to be the smartest person in the room. Instead they make everyone else smarter.” Gregor Hohpe , Enterprise Strategist , AWS https://architectelevator.com/architecture/multiple-dimensions/
- 34. Why do we need architecture ?
- 36. Architecture matters - “Bad architecture / no architecture slows down the ability of our customers to compete , as over time it becomes harder and harder to ship new features”
- 38. Ref - https://betterprogramming.pub/agile- architecture-intent-vs-the-immediate-36d327289b2d Agile architecture - Immediate Architecture to Architecture Intent
- 39. But , what does this have to do with me ? Why do I care about software/cloud architecture ? Why would I want to become a Cloud Architect?
- 40. https://info.flexera.com/CM-REPORT-State-of-the-Cloud “Almost all organizations are using at least one cloud” Reason 1 – Cloud adoption is increasing
- 41. https://info.flexera.com/CM-REPORT-State-of-the-Cloud Reason 2 – Companies are spending money on cloud
- 42. Reason 3 - Because , a 2020 survey by the Job search engine Indeed says – “Software Architect is the best job ” Look around you , you will see that architects are typically paid 5-10x , the salary of standalone engineers/developers.
- 44. What is cloud architecture ?
- 46. Cloud architecture is the way technology components combine to build a cloud, in which resources are pooled through virtualization technology and shared across a network. The components of a cloud architecture include: • A front-end platform (the client or device used to access the cloud) • A back-end platform (servers and storage) • A cloud-based delivery model • A network
- 48. If I had to define Cloud Architecture , or focus on a part of it , that makes the most sense to me , is to go with the below analogy - Pets Vs Cattle – If you understand this you understand Cloud architecture
- 49. Scalability Reliability Efficient Secure Maintainable Extensible Observable Testable So , in essence we can think of a cloud architecture as an architecture / design that -
- 50. Noticed something ? Essentially , nothing has changed . All the constraints / quality attributes that you needed to maintain in your datacenter based applications are relevant even now , more so than ever .
- 51. The cloud might be new , but the essence of architecture remains the same .
- 52. Scalability Reliability Efficient Secure Maintainable Extensible Observable Testable And if you can ensure that you manage your solution/architecture to align with the below constraints/requirements , then you are already doing the right thing -
- 53. Essentially , the attributes that public cloud offer , for example – infinite compute , pay as you go offering and so on , helps architects in building solutions that respect the quality attributes we discussed before . Cloud Platforms / Cloud Service Providers (AWS, Azure,GCP) help architects in building better solutions
- 54. And these are called – Non Functional Requirements
- 55. Normally , in architecture design , there are different types of requirements • Functional • UI • Business/Domain • Non-Functional (NFR)
- 56. Being a cloud architect , you should focus on documenting , defining , implementing and managing the NFR(s) of the system you are designing. Typically , these are documented in SADs ( Solution Architecture Documents )
- 59. Cornelia Davis , Amazon , Cloud Foundry “CLOUD-NATIVE = LOOSELY COUPLED RUNNING IN THE CLOUD” “Cloud is where you compute , Cloud-native is how you compute” Ref - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZHLtu8mj0&t=1045s
- 60. Cloud native is a big topic , stretching across a lot of components -
- 61. Principles of Cloud-native architectures https://www.ibm.com/cloud/architecture/architecture/practices/cloud-native-principles/
- 62. Wait , what ?
- 63. “At a high-level , if you really think about it , Cloud native architecture principles are just extensions of the best practices/standards that enforces the same NFR(s) that we discussed”
- 64. Let’s take an example – One of the key principles of cloud native architectures is immutability . This means that the infrastructure is not modified in place after deployment . This means that we must have an automated way of creating a new instance of an application . This means that if our existing application is down , we can quickly create a new instance. This means my application is (as a consequence) RELIABLE
- 65. So , simply put cloud-native application architectures are a way to build better applications that work better , scale better , are more reliable , take advantage of the cloud , provided you play by the rules .
- 66. The last part is very important – you need to play by the rules . Cloud service providers like AWS ,Azure OR cloud native platforms like Kubernetes , VMWare Tanzu are here to help , but you still need to architect your system correctly. And that is where cloud architects come into play.
- 67. Cloud-native is an approach to build & run applications that can leverage the advantages of the cloud computing model. These applications are built and deployed in a rapid cadence to the cloud platform and offer organizations greater agility, resilience, and portability across clouds. In a nutshell ,
- 68. At this point , it makes sense to briefly introduce some of the tools , and practices that make designing Cloud native applications possible -
- 69. Mostly , we start our cloud-native journey by learning about docker , which is good . But , please understand Docker != Cloud native
- 70. But , it’s true , you should learn about containers , as they really help in building cloud-native applications .
- 71. Containers Ref - https://www.docker.com/resources/what-container A container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another. A Docker container image is a lightweight, standalone, executable package of software that includes everything needed to run an application: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries and settings. Containers isolate software from its its environment and ensure that it works works uniformly despite differences for differences for instance between development development and staging.
- 72. It essentially solves -
- 73. But , then how do we manage multiple containers ? Container orchestration automates the deployment, management, scaling, and networking of containers. Enterprises that need to deploy and manage hundreds or thousands of containers and hosts can benefit from container orchestration.
- 75. Kubernetes - Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation. It has a large, rapidly growing ecosystem. Kubernetes services, support, and tools are widely available.
- 76. Microservices - Microservice architectural style is an approach to developing a single application as a suite of small services, each running in its own process and communicating with lightweight mechanisms, often an HTTP resource API. These services are built around business capabilities and independently deployable by fully automated deployment machinery. There is a bare minimum of centralized management of these services, which may be written in different programming languages and use different data storage technologies.
- 80. Cloud-study loop
- 81. Here , I want to share a few small things that worked for me in my journey to become a better cloud architect .
- 82. Focus on developing T shaped skills -
- 83. 1 . Follow other , better solution architects.
- 84. 2 . Listen to cloud podcasts while talking a walk , or chilling out.
- 85. 3 . Write a small program , in whatever language , at least once a month.
- 86. 4 . Subscribe to good newsletters to stay updated.
- 87. 5 . Get the basics right . Start with the why , before the how .
- 88. 6 . At work , try to get a gig that lets you think about architecture.
- 89. 7 . Write at least one blog , a month , on technology , and architecture , no matter what.
- 90. 8 . Get certified , as much as possible.
- 91. 9 . Try to speak on cloud technologies/software architecture at events.
- 92. 10 . Attend as many cloud interviews as possible
- 93. There is no shortcut to becoming a good cloud architect. You need to spend the required time , and effort .
- 94. So , coming back to the question – 1 . What went wrong ? 2 . What did they do wrong ? 3 . How can I/you prevent myself/ourself from doing the same mistakes?
- 95. Scenario 1 ( Sam ) – Needs to understand how architecture is important , and how to design applications that respect the NFR(s) to get a Cloud architect role ; only certifications are not enough
- 96. Scenario 2 ( Stephanie ) – Only programming/having a limited perspective of a system will not help in large-scale enterprise architecture. Having a holistic view is equally important , if not more.
- 98. Scan below QR code to contact me on LinkedIn
- 99. Or if you are URL kind-of-a-guy , use the below hyperlink - TurjaChaudhuri-LinkedIn
- 101. Scalability Ability to easily adapt to larger demand by allowing greater supply.
- 102. Reliability Ability to easily withstand interruptions or failures.
- 103. Efficiency Ability of the system to easily perform at the required level.
- 104. Security Ability to easily protect important or trusted data from non-approved entities.
- 105. Maintainability Ability to easily manage and operate a system over time.
- 106. Extensibility Ability to easily add new features to a system , by extending existing modules.
- 107. Testability Ability to easily test a system for issues or bugs.
- 108. Observability Ability to easily monitor a system for changes / alerts.